


Sunscreen

by JamyPeraltiago



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: B99 Summer 2020 Fic Exchange, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26435980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamyPeraltiago/pseuds/JamyPeraltiago
Summary: Never, in a million years, would Jake Peralta have thought that sunscreen would play such an important part in his life, in his love life, in his family. But, the fact that it does, just goes to show how powerful love is.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33
Collections: Summer 2020 Fic Exchange





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meepmorpperaltiago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meepmorpperaltiago/gifts).



Amy Santiago always wears SPF 30. She always reapplies her sunscreen every hour, exactly. She is intentional in her application, making sure that she applies sunscreen to every inch of her body that will be exposed, or could potentially be exposed, to the sun. If she goes in the water, she makes sure to reapply sunscreen the moment she dries off, and still keeps to the original hour schedule. Her mother had taught her how important it was to take care of her body, and that included her skin. To Amy, it wasn’t worth the risk to not be so deliberate with her sunscreen use.

Jake Peralta, on the other hand, is more liberal with his use of sunscreen. Growing up, his mother didn’t always remember to bring sunscreen to the beach, and when she did have any, it was never more than SPF 10. She encouraged Jake to get as much sun as possible, because it was good for the soul. Sure, after the beach, he needed a lot of aloe and ibuprofen and Gatorade, but he thought it was worth it. As an adult, Jake forgoes sunscreen altogether. He always ends up with a burn, but his red skin darkens pretty quickly, so he doesn’t really mind.

Amy can’t imagine being with someone who doesn’t understand the importance of wearing sunscreen. She figures that anyone who isn’t as intense about sunscreen as she is doesn’t respect their body. But then she meets Jake Peralta, and she understands that it’s okay that others don’t value sunscreen as much as she does. With time and patience and a little coaxing, the one she loves can come to value sunscreen as much as she does.


	2. June 2015

They’ve been dating for about a month when they finally both have a day off. It’s early in the morning in late June. It’s sunny and humid and already over 80°.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Amy suggests as they sit at her kitchen counter, sharing a bowl of cubed watermelon and sipping on glasses of iced green tea. Despite the fan blowing on them at full blast and wearing shorts and a tank top, Amy still feels like she’s drenched in sweat.

“Yes,” Jake pants, using a napkin to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

Amy packs up a bag with a blanket, towels, sunscreen, travel Scrabble and a football, and a cooler full of fruit (more watermelon, peaches, pineapple chunks, apples), granola bars, Gatorade, and water bottles, as Jake runs home to change into his swimsuit. They meet back up at the subway station and take the train to Coney Island.

They find a spot that’s not too crowded. Amy lays out the blanket, and Jake places their shoes, the cooler, and the tote bag on the corners to keep the blanket from blowing away. Jake rips off his shirt and lays face down on the blanket.

Jake can feel Amy sitting next to him and he turns his head so he can look at her. He watches as she rubs sunscreen on her arms and legs. She’s struggling as she tries to reach her back, but she doesn’t say anything. Jake chuckles as he watches her. She either doesn’t notice him chuckling, or she chooses to ignore him, because she continues trying to reach her back.

Jake sits up. “Here, let me help you.”

“Thanks,” Amy says, her shoulders relaxing.

Jake shifts his body so that he’s sitting behind her, his legs on either side of her. He picks up the bottle of sunscreen and squirts a dime-size amount into his palm. He rubs his palms together a few times, before placing his hands on Amy’s shoulders. He rubs his palms down and across her back, slowly, deliberately. He reaches the small of her back and hears her sharp intake of breath.

Jake scoots back and whispers, “You’re good.”

“You need help?” Amy asks as Jake slides back over to his side of the blanket.

“Nah, I’m good,” Jake says, shaking his head and leaning back, resting on his elbows.

“What do you mean ‘I’m good?’” she asks.

“I don’t use sunscreen,” Jake explains.

“What do you mean you ‘don’t use sunscreen?’”

Jake shrugs. “I just don’t use it.”

“Jake!” Amy exclaims. “You need to take care of your skin.”

“Oh, I don’t mind the sunburn. My skin darkens pretty quickly. It’s all good.”

Amy gently slaps his arm. “No, it’s not all good. All this unprotected exposure to the sun could lead to skin cancer or other health problems. You have to take care of yourself.”

Jake nods and then rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

Amy crawls over to sit behind him as he sits back up. She squirts sunscreen directly on his shoulders and back, causing him to shiver from the sudden coolness. He feels a little pressure as she begins to rub the sunscreen into his shoulders. Her hands meet in the middle and one hand reaches up to spread sunscreen on the back of his neck. Her hands run down his back, on his sides, down to his waist.

Jake and Amy have stupid good sex when they’re together but, having her spread sunscreen on him is a whole new level of intimacy. He’s enjoying having her hands all over his body. However, on top of the physical closeness of this action, there’s something deeper to it. It’s the reason why her hands are all over him – she cares so much about him, that she wants him to do things to take better care of himself. And he cares so much about her, that he’s willing to do these little things. It’s what make his relationship with Amy unlike any relationship he’s every been in before – the fact that he cares so much about her.

He no longer feels her hands on his back. He leans back until his back meets her chest. She wraps her arms around him, kissing his check before resting her head on his shoulder.

“Ames, thanks for caring so much about me,” he says softly, barely able to get the words out because he’s feeling so emotional.

“Of course,” she responds, pulling him in closer to her, kissing his check again.

They stay that way for a while, Jake feeling comforted by Amy’s embrace. Eventually, she lets go and carefully pushes him off of her. “You need to finish putting on sunscreen.”

Jake beams. He picks up the bottle of sunscreen and squirts it into his palm. He rubs the sunscreen on the rest of his body as he watches her crawl back to her spot on the blanket next to him. He’s not paying attention at all to what he’s doing, he’s so enamored by Amy.

Once he thinks he has sufficiently covered his body in sunscreen he stands up, offering his hand down to Amy, who takes it and stand up with him.

“C’mon.”

He leads her down to the water. They wade in, until the water is up to their knees. Jake turns and looks at Amy, who’s looking back at him, glowing. She steps closer to him, and he pulls her into his side.

“You know I’m going to make you put more sunscreen back on the moment we get out of the water, right?”

Jake laughs. “I know.”

And with that, he lets go of her and dives into the approaching wave. When he pops back up to the surface, he turns and sees Amy still standing in the same spot, giggling.

He knows deep within his heart, that he’ll put on as much sunscreen as she wants him to for the rest of his life. And he’s cool with that. 


	3. May 2018

So, their honeymoon had gotten off to a rough start. Really, how many people had to experience their honeymoon with their boss? But Holt had finally accepted the (temporary) loss of his dream to be commissioner and went back to Brooklyn, leaving Jake and Amy to enjoy their honeymoon, just the two of them.

Amy exits the bathroom of their hotel room to find Jake frantically rummaging through their bags.

“Babe, what’s wrong?”

He answers her without looking up, moving on to the next bag. “I can’t find any sunscreen.”

Amy laughs, remembering the start of their relationship, when she had to explain to him the importance of wearing sunscreen. Now look at him, taking initiative. They’ve certainly come a long way.

She pulls one of their bags out from under the bed. “I have some here.”

Jake relaxes, releases a sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”

He reaches to take it from her, but she snaps it out of his reach at the last second. She shakes her head in disbelief, “Who are you?”

He pretends to pout. “Babe, I’m your husband.”

He barely has the word “husband” out of his mouth before the pout transforms into the widest grin Amy’s ever seen.

Amy grins back. “You’re my husband!”

“I’m your husband! I love saying that! I love you!”

Amy drops the sunscreen on the bed and steps closer to Jake. She slowly slides her arms around his waist and he wraps his arms around her neck. She looks up at him and whispers, “Remember when we had just started dating, and I had to convince you to wear sunscreen? And now look at you, stressing over where the sunscreen is. Look at how much has changed since we started dating. I love you more and more each and every day.”

Jake leans down and rests his forehead to Amy’s. “Amy Santiago, you make me a better person. And I love every minute of being with you. I love you.”

Amy places a soft peck on each of his cheeks, before kissing him on the lips. She starts to pull away from him, but he tightens his embrace. She allows him to lead her closer to the bed. She continues to kiss him as she sits on the bed, and then leans back. He crawls on top of her.

Clothes are being pulled off and thrown around the room as Jake and Amy momentarily ditch the plan to go the beach, choosing instead to enjoy each other’s company.

An hour later, they’re lying in bed, panting, Jake’s head resting on Amy’s chest as she plays with his hair.

“Ames…”

“Jacob Peralta, love of my life…”

Jake shifts his body so that he can look up at her, and her heart skips a beat at the sight of the smile on his face.

“You still want to go to the beach?” he asks.

“I guess we should, we did spend all this money and came all this way. Perhaps we shouldn’t be a cliché and spend the whole honeymoon in the hotel room,” she responds.

Jake rolls out of the bed and Amy follows him. They put on their swimsuits and Jake starts to apply sunscreen to himself. Amy watches as he struggles to spread the sunscreen on his back. She walks over to him and places her hand on the small of his back and leans to whisper into his ear. “Here, let me help you.”

Amy takes the bottle of sunscreen away from Jake and squirts some onto his back. She takes her time, slowly rubbing it into his back, making sure to get every inch of his body covered. She bites her lip as he groans when she applies a little pressure, her fingertips pressing into his skin along his waist. He leans back against her and she begins to press kisses into his back, up his neck, nibbling at his ear while she plays with his hair.

“Ames…” he growls.

Jake reaches behind him to touch Amy, and she presses her whole body against him.

“Jake…” she hums.

An hour later and they find themselves panting on the bed again, nowhere closer to the beach. 

Amy’s resting her head on Jake’s chest as she lays on top of him, her legs straddling his. “Are we a cliché?” she asks as she traces circles slowly into his bicep, pressing another kiss into his chest.

“Hmmm,” Jake moans. “Maybe.”

Why is it that there’s the cliché that newlyweds never leave the hotel room on their honeymoon? Amy thinks about how she’s feeling, right in this moment: pure bliss. She’s so in love with her husband. And while they’re not new to having sex or being intimate, there’s something different now that they’re married. They just declared their love in front of all their friends, the people who are the most important to them in the world, and she knows how privileged they are to share this love. It’s that their relationship has grown, in a way that none of their previous relationships ever did. It’s that they make each other better, and their marriage is proof of that. So that’s why she accepts being a cliché – because their relationship has reached a new deepness, a new level of commitment, a new intimacy, that so many dream of realizing, and they want, no, need, to celebrate it.

Amy presses kisses up his chest, up his neck, along his chin, back to his lips. “I guess there’s a reason that not leaving the hotel room is a honeymoon cliché.”

“I say, let’s just go with it,” Jake says, kissing Amy back.

“The beach will be there tomorrow,” she shrugs, kissing Jake’s chin, and his chest, continuing down, down, down.

“The beach will be there tomorrow…” Jake gasps.

Amy accepts her and Jake being a cliché as they start in on their third round before noon.


	4. August 2020

If he could have had any say in it, Jake would not have chosen to have his son be born at the beginning on a world-wide pandemic. Alas, though, he had no control over these things, and his son spent his first few months of life quarantined, sheltered from the outside world. Perhaps, it wasn’t a completely terrible thing – his son was very healthy, being isolated from the millions of germs that were typically unavoidable in New York City.

By August though, things were slowly beginning to open up again, with precautions set into place. After much debate, Amy and Jake came to the decision that it would be good for Mac to have an experience outside of their small NYC apartment. And so, they packed up the car and drove out to a tiny, rented beach house in the Hamptons, where they could have access to a private beach for Mac’s first excursion into the real world. 

Mac is in his carrier on top of the kitchen counter, as Jake sits in the stool in front of him, holding a bottle of baby sunscreen. Jake scrunches up his eyebrows. The warning on the back of the bottle says not for children under six months.

“Ames?” he calls out. “I’m confused.”

“What’s wrong babe?” she asks as she joins Jake in the kitchen, still wearing her pajamas. She wraps one arm around Jake’s shoulders and tickles Mac’s tummy, laughing along with him.

“So, we can’t put sunscreen on Mac?”

“No, he’s too little,” she states.

“Well, how do we keep him safe from the sun?”

Amy rolls her eyes. “We have this little tent for him to sit in, plus the hat and the sunglasses, and the linen long sleeve top and pants. He’ll be in the shade and completely covered.”

Jake shakes his head and fakes outrage. “But you taught me that we always have to wear sunscreen! You lied to me?”

Amy pulls her arm from around Jake and lifts Mac out of his carrier. “You’re an idiot,” she says with a smirk and a wink as she walks Mac into the bedroom.

Jake follows her into the bedroom, where she’s changing Mac’s diaper on the floor. “Well, if Mac doesn’t have to wear sunscreen, then neither do I,” he declares.

“Fine,” Amy responds. “You’re a grown man, do what you want.”

Jake’s jaw drops open. That was not the response he was expecting from his wife. “Really? You’re not going to lecture me on taking care of my body? You’re not going to tell me that it’s even more pertinent that I take care of my body now that I have a child who’s depending on me? You’re not going to tell me how important it is that I wear sunscreen so that I stay healthy for years and years to come and can have a relationship with my son?”

Amy has finished changing Mac’s diaper and lifts him up as she stands up next to Jake. “No, I don’t need to tell you all that because you just told it to yourself.”

“Damn it,” Jake laughs. He kisses Amy on the cheek and then takes Mac out of her arms so that she can finish getting herself ready for the beach. Five years of being with Amy and clearly, she’s rubbed off on him, in the best way possible. He knows her so well; he knows what she would say before she has to even say it. It’s not even just that he can anticipate her arguments, it’s that he’s come to share some of her beliefs and values. Some of the issues they use to argue over, are nonissues because of her positive influence in his life. She’s seriously the best thing that’s ever happened to him. 

Jake looks down at Mac, who’s cooing in his arms. He’s tied with Amy for being the best thing in Jake’s life.


	5. July 2030

In the last few years, it has become a tradition for the Santiago-Peralta family to celebrate the Fourth of July at the beach. They rent a house down in Delaware, just the five of them, for the week. They spend their mornings on the beach, swimming in the waves, throwing a football around, building sandcastles, reading. They spend their afternoons strolling the boardwalk, riding the thrill rides, playing arcade games, browsing in the bookstore and antique shops, filling up on fudge, and taffy, and cotton candy. On the Fourth of July, Jake barbeques hot dogs and hamburgers and ribs, and corn on the cob and zucchini and tomatoes, and they sit on the front porch watching the fireworks over the ocean. It’s always such a fun time and they look forward to it, all year long.

They arrive at the house late at night on June 30, so they unpack and head right to bed. They wake up early Monday morning, ready to walk down to the beach by 8am. Jake drags a wagon, filled with sand toys, a football, a frisbee, a volleyball, a soccer ball, paddles and a rubber ball, cornhole, two beach chairs, three umbrellas, and five-year-old Ginny. Amy drags a wagon filled with two coolers (one filled with water, Gatorade, lemonade, iced green tea, apple juice, and capri suns, the other filled with sandwiches, pretzels, apples, oranges, peaches, plums, watermelon chunks, pineapple chunks, granola bars, and cookies) and tote bags filled with towels, blankets, sunscreen, bug spray, books, travel scrabble, travel Guess Who, and a portable radio. Ten-year-old Mac and eight-year-old Trey walk in between Jake and Amy, carrying their boogie boards.

“You think we have enough stuff?” Jake turns around and asks Amy.

“Obviously, we’re moving to the beach,” Amy jokes. 

Everyone pitches in to help set up once they arrive at the beach, putting down blankets (with flipflops and coolers on the corners to hold them down), setting up the beach umbrellas and chairs. Amy pulls out the sunscreen, getting ready to lather everyone up.

Ginny’s still young enough that she just listens to Amy and Jake, and allows her mother to put sunscreen on her without a fight (plus, it helps that the kid’s sunscreen Amy uses comes out of the bottle purple). And Mac, is just like a mini Amy, so he puts the sunscreen on without even having to be told to. 

But Trey… well, Trey is like a mini Jake. He likes to have fun, to push the boundaries.

“I don’t want to,” Trey whines when Amy tells him it’s his turn to put on sunscreen. 

“Well, it’s not a choice,” Amy states. 

“But, why?”

“We have to protect ourselves from the sun,” Amy explains.

“But, the sun is so far away,” Trey counters. 

“Well, it’s still harmful.”

“I don’t get it,” Trey shrugs.

Amy’s at a loss as to what to say to Trey. She’s still tired from traveling last night and can’t think of a way to explain to an eight-year-old why he needs sunscreen. She turns to look at Jake, but he and Ginny are already in the sand, building a castle, and she’d hate to interrupt their fun. 

“Trey…” she starts, but Mac cuts her off.

“You know what Trey; the sun is far away. But it’s super strong, like stronger than Superman. And, the sun has rays, that can really hurt your skin. But, it doesn’t hurt you right away. And you can’t see it hurt you. And the only thing that can protect you, is sunscreen. It’s like, Batman wears his batsuit to give him superpowers against the Joker, and the Penguin. Well, we wear sunscreen and it gives us superpowers against the sun.” 

“Woah!” Trey responds. 

Amy smiles, amused. Of course, relate anything to superheroes, and you can make an eight-year-old do it. As she applies sunscreen to Trey, she thinks of how proud she is of Mac. He’s such an amazing older brother. Honestly, she’s proud and amazed by all her kids; they’re such incredible little humans. 

She finishes applying sunscreen to Trey, and he and Mac are off, running down to the water with their boogie boards. Amy quickly applies sunscreen to herself before she follows them down to the water. She stands up to her knees, allowing the waves to crash on her thighs, as she watches Mac and Trey race back and forth in the water, occasionally trying to use their boogie boards to ride the waves. She turns back and looks at Jake, sitting in the sand, allowing their daughter to take charge in the building of a sandcastle. Jake looks back at Amy and waves, beaming back at her. 

Amy knows she is so lucky. She has an amazing husband, and with him, they made the three best kids anyone could ever ask for.


	6. Epilogue

Amy Santiago always wears SPF 30. She always reapplies her sunscreen every hour, exactly. She is intentional in her application, making sure that she applies sunscreen to every inch of her body that will be exposed, or could potentially be exposed, to the sun. If she goes in the water, she makes sure to reapply sunscreen the moment she dries off, and still keeps to the original hour schedule. Her mother had taught her how important it was to take care of her body, and that included her skin. To Amy, it wasn’t worth the risk to not be so deliberate with her sunscreen use. She makes sure that she passes this value to her children, making sure that they also understand the importance of wearing sunscreen.

Jake Peralta almost never wore sunscreen. That is, until he started dating Amy Santiago. She was cautious in the sun and taught him to be cautious too. She taught him to value his body and to protect it. These were values that they passed along to their children.

Never, in a million years, would Jake Peralta have thought that sunscreen would play such an important part in his life, in his love life, in his family. But, the fact that it does, just goes to show how powerful love is. 


End file.
